Watch: What is happening when the world’s fastest growing group of internet users come online

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Obsession

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Written by

Obsession

Since we launched in 2012, Quartz has been obsessed with covering the billions of people who will connect to the internet in this decade. There are few macro developments with broader implications for commerce, finance, trade, education, governance, public health, employment, and technology.

Today we use this lens to look more closely at the East Asia and Pacific region, home to the largest and fastest-growing group of internet users, according to the World Bank. Its economic development has been fueled for decades by globalization and industrialization. Is the internet accelerating that? Is it delivering on its promises to improve education and citizens’ access to information? Are digital businesses helping to create more jobs than they’re destroying?

At the World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington, DC, Quartz’s editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney is leading a discussion on these topics with Timor-Leste vice-minister of finance Helder Lopes, VietnamPlus editor-in-chief Le Quoc Minh, Huawei Technologies vice president William Plummer, and Cindy Mi, founder and CEO of Chinese online education startup VIPKID.

You can watch a livestream of the session here at 12:30pm ET. More details on the panel are here.